THE biography it's a kind of text that tells the story of someone's life.
The word biography is composed of terms of Greek origin bio (life and spelling (writing).
Features
- narrative genre
- Text narrated in third person
- Chronological order of facts
- Set of information about someone's life
- Account of remarkable facts in someone's life
- Use of personal and possessive pronouns
- Use of temporal markers (in childhood, adolescence, at that time, etc.)
- Predominance of verbs in the past tense (perfect and imperfect)
- Likelihood of the facts narrated
How to make a Biography?
First of all, we must research the life of the person we are going to do a biography of.
Researching and collecting materials are essential for the text to have more property and still be interesting for the reader.
In addition, and if possible, interviewing the person or family members makes the information reported in the text even more credible.
In this case, you can include sentences from the person themselves, or from someone talking about them. However, if you are going to quote someone's lines, you must enclose it in quotation marks and the text in italics. For example:
“Life is a play that does not allow rehearsals... therefore, sing, laugh, dance, cry and live each moment of your life intensely... before the curtain closes and the play ends without applause.” (Charlie Chaplin)
Data such as date of birth and death, main contributions, inventions, personal life, marriage, children, etc. are important information and should appear in a biography.
In addition, you can add images, which makes the work even more interesting.
Once that's done, you must write a text and it can have a title with just the person's name (Charlie Chaplin's Biography). Or, include a salient feature, for example: "Charlie Chaplin: The Movie Genius”.
The text should follow a chronological order of events that happened in that person's life. You can include sections to break the text into parts, for example:
- Birth
- Main Achievements
- Construction
- Death
- Curiosities
This is all at your discretion, and of course, following your teacher's instructions. Finally, you should review the text.
A good idea is to read the text aloud (it could be to a friend or family member) and analyze if everything is coherent, if it has grammatical errors or even repeated words. In that case, they can be replaced by synonyms.
Biography and Autobiography
Although both bring together the main characteristics of someone's life, the autobiography is written by the person himself. Thus, the person narrates facts about his personal life. Note that both are narrative literary genres.
We can cite some notorious examples of autobiographies such as Anne Frank's diary and the Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
And the Minibiography?
As the name implies, a minibiography is a more concise type of biography. In it, only the most relevant aspects of someone's life are presented, such as the most outstanding facts, the works and the main contributions.
An example of a minibiography is those texts written on the insides of the covers of books, which speak briefly of the writer's life. For example:
"Dan Brown is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Academy and for years taught English until he achieved his dream: writing full time.
Son of an eminent mathematician who won the Presidential Award, his hobby was sacred music.
Dan Brown grew up surrounded by books on philosophy, science and religion, a factor that contributed significantly to his education and to the elaboration of his works.
O Da Vinci Code has achieved unprecedented success, reaching first place in the top sales and is translated into more than forty languages.
It will be adapted for film by Columbia Pictures."
(Dan Brown's minibiography in the work The Da Vinci Code)
Examples
To better understand this type of text, check out three examples of biographies of Brazilian writers below.
- Monteiro Lobato Biography
- Biography of Machado de Assis
- Biography of Vinícius de Moraes
